US President Donald Trump said Tuesday he was deciding whether to make a deal with Iran or “annihilate” the country in a bombastic 37-minute speech to the United Nations that appeared tailored to war-weary American voters.
The 80-year-old president’s threat came after repeated claims that under him the United States is successfully confronting its adversaries and reshaping the world order to its own advantage.
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Since returning to office last year for a second term, Trump has sent shockwaves through the global order, joining Israel to attack Iran, ordering an armed raid on Venezuela that seized the country’s president and threatening to annex Greenland by military force.
“While others have spoken of peace, I have made peace. While others have ignored threats, I have confronted them,” Trump told the room full of world leaders at the UN General Assembly in New York.
Despite claiming credit as a peacemaker, Trump delivered a jarring warning as he sought to justify the nearly seven-month war against Iran, which he claimed was launched to stop Tehran acquiring nuclear weapons.
“I have a big decision to make – will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country?” Trump said.
“Or do I annihilate the Islamic republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival?”
Trump spoke less than a week after a UN fact-finding mission said it had reasonable grounds to believe US forces committed war crimes in two strikes on Iran, including one that killed scores of children in a primary school in the southern city of Minab.
Trump reiterated that he believed Iran would “make a deal right after” the US midterm elections in November – in which his Republican party faces losing control of Congress, at least partly due to high fuel prices caused by the unpopular war.
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‘Military might’
Much of the rest of his speech was dedicated to proclaiming his own achievements in making the United States the “most powerful country in the world”.
Trump threatened to use the “unmatched military might” of the US to secure Washington’s interests in Latin America, and said the Communist-run island of Cuba would soon “fall”.
Cuba has suffered repeated nationwide blackouts after the US imposed a devastating fuel blockade on the Caribbean nation in January, leaving millions of people without power.
Members of the Cuban delegation walked out of the hall as Trump referenced his pressure campaign against the country.
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He also hailed a deal with Greenland under which he said Washington would build two bases in the Arctic territory. Trump was signing the deal with the leaders of Denmark and Greenland on the sidelines of the UN.
The Greenland deal has sparked bitter divisions within long-term US alliances including NATO and revived fears that under Trump Washington is no longer a reliable partner.
The volatile US president also renewed his attack on what he claimed were “far-left globalist” bodies, including the United Nations itself and the International Criminal Court, which he urged other countries to boycott.
‘Super intelligence’
Trump also rejected calls for international supervision of artificial intelligence, calling them a “globalist scheme” to control the new technology.
The US president announced that the US government would henceforth use the term “super intelligence” rather than “artificial intelligence” in its communications, and said he hoped the world would follow suit.
“It sounds much better,” he added, claiming the term was “much more accurate”.
Trump also dismissed warnings from AI safety advocates, comparing them to warnings about climate change, whose human causes are affirmed by the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community.
“Every major new technology brings challenges, and super intelligence is no exception,” he said.
Ahead of the week of meetings and speeches in New York, leaders of more than 20 countries urged binding safety measures for advanced artificial intelligence, warning that the technology’s development could outpace the ability to control it.
AI superpowers China and the United States are not signatories.
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Trump told the UN that the “United States totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control … artificial intelligence.”
UN chief Antonio Guterres, meanwhile, called for the US and China to start a dialogue on the technology’s future akin to US-Soviet engagement at the height of the Cold War.
“Governments with the greatest AI capabilities have the greatest responsibilities to humanity, to establish channels for dialogue, transparency, trust and cooperation,” Guterres said in his address to the assembly.
“At a pivotal moment during the Cold War, strategic rivals came to recognise the need to manage shared existential risks.”
Trump’s speech to the world body was perhaps less fiery than last year’s, which was characterised by Trump’s extraordinary accusations of UN sabotage.
Those claims were sparked when an escalator in New York briefly stopped working and the teleprompter glitched. This year Trump ascended the escalator with wife Melania without a hitch, and appeared to read his speech faithfully from the teleprompter.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP and Reuters)
